The Myth of Capitalism – A Book by Jonathan Tepper

Many of our readers are probably aware of the excellent work our friend Jonathan Tepper does for Variant Perception (VP)*****, a financial research boutique that really does bring a unique perspective to the table*. Jonathan (with co-author Denise Hearn) has just added a new book to his résumé, which is going to be released on 12 November: The Myth of Capitalism (MoC) – Monopolies and the Death of Competition** (a link to the official site is at the end of this post).

Jonathan Tepper and Denise Hearn: The Myth of Capitalism, an excellent plea for more competition and free markets.

MoC deals with a subject that has increasingly captured the attention of political and economic observers in recent years: the growing quasi-monopolistic powers of a small (and shrinking) number of large corporations that have seemingly succeeded in exempting themselves from competition.

They are often aided and abetted by government imposing regulations certain to suppress competition from less well-funded upstarts and smaller firms. At the same time governments are creating loopholes which only the biggest established firms with international operations are able to take advantage of.

Don’t get us wrong – we have no problem with loopholes as such: to paraphrase Mises, they allow capitalism to breathe. Problematic is only that the benefits granted to the most powerful players are denied to their potential competitors; we wouldn’t want to see these loopholes closed, we would like to see them extended far and wide.

Restoring Consumer Sovereignty

MoC is not focused on questions of monopoly theory***. The book is actually quite a page turner, at the same time informative, entertaining and infuriating. It is primarily concerned with practical problems and discusses what might be done to overcome them.